#best play school franchise without royalty

[lolotheparagon]

Who were your favorite characters from G3/G4 mlp and why?

G3:

Wisteria - i love a good garden horse who's also a big socialist and hates the idea of being royalty cos she misses being with her friends

Minty - the goofiest lovable horse in the entire franchise that always delivered G3's most iconic moments (you broke santa? scene comes to mind) and its offensive she was never brought back for G4

Pinkie Pie - I honestly prefer this version over G4 Pinkie, cos seeing a level-headed, snarky yet still upbeat Pinkie, its a lot more fun and interesting to see than a wacky, emotionally unstable mess that is G4 Pinkie

Kimono - I really wish she was in G3 a lot more, cos the idea of a village hermit pony (not because she hates everyone but because shes very introverted) who occasionly helps the ponies with problems or give advice or just be someone to confide in is a great idea

Lily Lightly - her special about learning to love your weird wonderful self is such an important, sweet lesson cos even grown ass adults struggle to embrace being cringe. And her horn glowing makes her passion for lights that much more interesting cos its like she's sharing her love of lights to make everyone glow like she does. What a pioneer, she invented electric lights for these horses

Rarity - I love how much of a rambunctious little goober Rarity is, especially for a princess in training. Like she doesnt care that she never fell off a waterfall, she immediately wants to do it again. She loves to rollerskate, play around in the mud and wants to play with a caterpillar rather than study, like a real kid would do. But she does actually take her princess lessons seriously and grows into a more responsible person, without losing her fun-loving self.

Scootaloo - out of all the G3 ponies, Scoots stands out for being a little ankle biter but has a good heart. She can be selfish, impulsive and stubborn, again G3 really knows how to write kid characters

Sweetie Belle - the epitome of no thoughts, head empty and I love her for it. She's so baby and happy, that telling a white lie is a foreign concept to her

Cheerilee - I like her more neurotic and shy version than her teacher counterpart in G4, I also like that her dynamic with Scootaloo isnt toxic, unlike a lot of sibling relationships in media, the two are not only similar in age but also share the same stubbornness, but the two are quick to apologise to each other and its clear they still love each other, despite their differences.

Rainbow Dash - I LOVE DIVA DASH SO MUCH. WHY THE FUCK DID BRONIES COMPLAIN ABOUT HER OVER THE YEARS? SHE'S HILARIOUS?!

G4:

Twilight Sparkle - as much as I hate how much she became a vector for the writers spewing friendship, I love how Twilight became a great protagonist growing from an asocial student to the princess of friendship, being the straight mare to everyone's antics. Although her perfectionism and fanaticism have become flanderised over the years

Fluttershy - talk about a glow up, she went from an insufferable uwu wallflower to an introverted, yet snarky and self-confident pony who has retained all her lessons of self-assertion and yet still being the sweet, shy horse we all know. Also shy quiet characters having dry wit and has calm indignation when something ticks them off is just peak character writing

Rarity - this horse made me love ultra feminine characters, i remember hating Rarity when I started watching cos I knew she would be just the stereotypical diva bitch character that reminded me of all the girls i had to deal with in school at the time (me having insecurities about my femininty didnt help), but damn i couldnt be more wrong, cos she's a wonderfully sassy yet kind and passionate character. Her love of fashion and creating is infectious and while her friends are wildly different to her, she tries her best to make something she knows they will all like and isnt afraid to get her hooves dirty to help others

Discord - the most uniquely designed and characterised character. As someone who starts off a chaotically evil villain to a chaotic good reformed ally cos the shy horse reached out to him, its no surprise he became so popular in both the show and fandom. And to this day, his redemption is the most well-executed example ive seen cos of how tentative it was. I love how incredibly devoted he is to Fluttershy and will kill anyone who harms her. I just wish he had more scenes with the rest of the mane 6, I would've loved more Pinkie and Discord pulling pranks together.

Maud Pie - you will never find another pony in the entirety of MLP like Maud. Stoic, blunt and very literal in her choice of words, expressionless yet becomes instantly emotional and caring when her loved ones are hurt or in danger. Like whoever wrote her, I love you cos she's the most refreshing character ive seen. I love characters who look like eternally on autopilot yet will spring into action like a bat out of hell if the people they love are hurt.

Sunset Shimmer - The fact Sunset Shimmer didnt become a protagonist in her own right in Equestria Girls cos WE HAVE TO HAVE A TWILIGHT in every MLP G4 universe is a crying shame. She was saved from being a boring high school girl villain obsessed with power and thats it to a strong-willed, passionate, devoted friend who will fight tooth and nail to make her friends happy. I love how EQG reforms a bully without forcing Sunset to lose her edge and fiery temper cos that was always the biggest problem kids shows fall into when redeeming bullies. That scene were Sunset yells at Sci-Twi for unintentionally causing a lot of damage to Canterlot High and putting her friends in danger was palpable.

Princess Cadance - one of the most level headed characters in the show and honestly does a much better job at being a mentor to Twilight than Celestia. Also her relationship with Shining Armor is peak power couple. I love how despite being more powerful than he is, Cadance never treats him as someone beneath her. She's just great and I hate teenage me for calling her a bland Barbie horse.

Trixie - Trixie is the prime example of designated bitch cos the show tries desperately hard to make her look like a villain when all she did was put on a magic show and boast about her magic. Even when she gets redeemed, she was treated with more scorn and derision than DISCORD (who did a lot worse than Trixie) and becomes friends with a pony who one time SOLD HER HOUSE WITHOUT HER PERMISSION TO A RANDO JUST BECAUSE THEY HAD AN ARGUMENT THAT THE WAGON WAS TOO SMALL FOR BOTH OF THEM TO SLEEP IN. JESUS this show treated her like shit. its a damn shame cos Trixie's self-confidence and sarcasm made her a delight and underneath all her theatrics, she really does care for people and that wouldve been interesting to discuss if the show didnt constantly harp on her being arrogant COS HOW DARE SHE

Spike - Ive really grown to like Spike looking back, while Twilight has become more erractic and insane as time went on, Spike has become the straight man. I love how unphased he is about liking traditionally girly things and is comfortable with being a dragon who likes pony things. Of course bronies lambasted him for being selfish and mean or impulsive at times, cos how dare a kid character acts like a kid. I also like how overly excited he is about wanting to help others, from Twilight to Applejack to Rarity. I just really wish the writers dropped the whole crush he had on Rarity, cos the show got REALLY WEIRD with it.

Sunburst - what a delightfully nerdy horse. From hyperfixating on ancient pony lore and artifacts to being precise about a right answer percentage in a town trivia contest, he's hilarious and way too good of a character to be saddled with Starlight Glimmer of all people. He shouldve been Trixie's best friend if we're being honest.

Sorry for late reply!

[seoplassy]

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[geek-talk000]

TRR MC Conspiracy Theory

Buckle up. I had some thoughts recently and I decided to share them and have fun :D You can laugh, or you can discuss it further with me. I had fun writing this :) 

So... Riley Brooks. I’ve read nearly all of the books and I remember that every MC had established a back story. We learned things about them like parents, school life, past flings in one book or sequels but TRR franchise is currently on its 6 book and we didn’t know about her life before meeting the prince. 

Someone could say “so what? There is nothing deep about it, the writers didn’t want to bother” but it’s not fun xp

I think there is a reason they didn’t tell us bout her past. It’s because....

*drum roll*

she’s a match. *Perfect Match* 

Think about it. 

She has no background, no relationships and she immediately *clicks* with the prince. She has everything he was looking for. It sounds too good to be true.

I think she was Eros Match #1, the Original. When Rowan kidnapped PM gang he told them this during the dinner:

Maybe that was the case at the beginning. Perhaps a test on how much science can imitate real human beings but he became obsessed about Matches and started treating them like his children. Because someone happened...

 it was Daniel

Meet Daniel, former Eros inventor and engineer. He knew Riley was a miracle since he laid his eyes on her and had their first talk. She wasn’t a human being, but she was alive. Her brain and heart were artificial but her thoughts weren’t. She controlled her emotions and thoughts but she wasn’t safe at Eros because of Rowan greed and desire for power and control. So he deleted his plans and notes Eros could use in the future and they run away. Layed low, working in a bar, barely affording to leave. He did one last thing as her handler - he deleted all of her memories and blocked the ability to think about her past - no Eros, no Matches, no Daniel’s being her creator and the moment she opened her eyes for the first time in the lab. 

Now answers for questions you may have:

- What about other Li’s?

Depend on other Li’s [MC] gives them what they were looking in life (I only read TRR with Liam and Hana route, so forgive me if I mistake something :/)

Hana all of her life was pressured to marry someone rich and successful. she didn’t have a real and happy childhood and her parents moulded her into their image. When MC appeared in her life, they were rivals, but Riley showed her you can be respected without losing yourself and not missing in life. She showed Hana love can be a magical and intimate thing not only a business transaction. 

Drake was in the shadow of his best friend. I don’t think it was Liam’s fault because he would never think about him less just because he isn’t royalty. MC broke through Drake’s bitterness and felt in love of who he truly was and showed him that a higher social status doesn’t mean being bad and you can do a lot of good things too :)

Maxwell... I don’t really know what to write about him :( I think he’s really nice and I personally treat him like a younger brother, but I think (judging from other people’s post) he and MC had a good relationship buildup. Maybe in some way she made him more responsible... He’s funny and I apologize all Maxwell stans... Drake’s too, because as I said I only played Liam and Hana route... But that’s my impressions.

- MC gave birth in TRH, and I’m sure Matches can’t do that! 

Yes, but consider this - If Riley is indeed Match #1 she must’ve been Eros breakthrough. She was designed to pass as a human, so she would be able to live on her own, or in case she was captured, her kidnappers had to believe she’s a person. 

Eros thought about everything.(I added the wired to the MC’s for fun) Her organs aren't a machine but it’s not a real thing either. Her skin is fake but it turned red when she blushes. She is the closest thing to the humans ever created. 

She’s a miracle. 

Think about her as a more advanced Host from Westworld

Hope you enjoyed it! :)

[nomadicism]

I read that one posts. I agree with Sol. I think it's more likely that Dreamworks crunched the numbers, figured it wouldn't be profitable and just canned the project than them cancelling it because of a very small section of the internet. p1

“p2 Mecha is just a dying genre as a whole. Even in Japan, isekai has taken it's place and there are hardly any new mechas outside of Gundam. That's in Japan! In the west, mecha is even more niche of an interest and general audiences don't gravitate towards it. I don't think that any mecha movie wouldn't do well at the box office. I'm even worried about that Gundam movie bombing at the box office.”

Hi Anon, thank you for the Ask!

Yeah, I agree with Sol too—and at risk of repeating what I’ve said in other posts about the movie thing—it’s really hard to convey just how incredibly unlikely a property like Voltron or Robotech will ever be made into a live-action movie. It really is about the numbers, as it always has been. Since the 80s, there’s this whole persistent and stupid element of the cartoon industry that continues to delude itself that promises or interest from Hollywood will ever pan out. There are so many scripts sitting in production limbo, that it’s almost criminal.

No one wants to risk money on a live-action movie based on children’s media IP that won’t bring in rated PG-13 or R dollars from adults, and no one wants to risk repeating the 80s He-Man film. The exceptions are live-action films made from children’s media IP that are fully owned by the company paying to produce the movie. I’ve got more to say about the complexities of royalties, but that’s awfully long-winded when I get into it, and I’d rather be long-winded about giant robots. (◕ᴗ◕✿)

The topic of mecha genre dying out is what really interests me here. It’s a topic that I think about a lot, as the beginnings of the mecha genre had a lot of deep cultural time-and-place stuff behind it, even if the stories were just kids and teen boys hopping into a giant robot to beat up other giant robots and monsters, in what were essentially 30 minute long toy commercials.

Isekai will come-and-go as all genres do. It’s not a new genre, but right now the types of themes driving the isekai stories being made speaks to a lot of interesting things happening in the youth of Japan’s relationship with digital gaming and role-play escapism. It’s fascinating, even though the focus of the genre as it’s done today hasn’t really grabbed me in the same way that isekai of the 80s-90s did.

Mecha isekai exists, and it’s only a matter of time before someone either remakes Vision of Escaflowne, or does a more mecha-focused isekai story similar to Magic Knight Rayearth. I doubt anyone would revisit Aura Battler Dunbine, or Super Dimension Century Orguss, but an otaku can dream.

Before we can say the mecha genre is dying, let’s briefly skim over the genre trends of the past +40 years. Every decade or era of mecha anime has a trend that reflects cultural concerns built into it, in a way that I don’t think any other genre of animation can touch (until now, with Digital/Virtual/Fantasy RPG World Isekai).

Late 60s-70s was: Super Robot smashes monsters and alien robots

Mid-70s – early 80s was: Combining Mecha Sentai Team Super Robot smashes monsters and alien robots

80s was: Real Robot + “how many sci-fi/fantasy settings can we put a robot into?” + the death-throes of Super Robot (e.g. Dairugger XV, Golion, Baldios, Godmars)

Also 80s: What the hell was Super Dimension Fortress Macross about? Cold war tensions of escalating end-the-world arms race meets an alien species whose only culture is fighting. Where songs about love, and the culture of love, are what win the day, not just transforming robots and big guns. Macross is deeper than it lets on.

Fun 80s: GoShogun happened. The first parody-satire mecha anime that still feels more serious than they intended, but is actually hilarious once you get past the dated gender roles humor (which was also kind of intentional satire).

WTF 80s: Space Runaway Ideon broke everyone’s minds.

Still not done with 80s: Gunbuster happened. The first angst-driven parody-satire mecha anime that blew everyone’s minds.

Late 80s-early 90s OVA mecha was a mix of Serious Cyberpunk-influenced Real Robot for older teens and adults + Mecha with Tits & Tentacles for Adults (see also space elf lesbians).

90s was: The Franchises Will Survive With Prettier Pilots, and Super Angst-Bot That Was Way More Influenced By Drugs And Ideon’s Ending Than Anyone Wants To Admit (aka Neon Genesis Evangelion) + “Since Gunbuster was a success, how many parodies of Super Robot and Real Robot can we do?”

Mid 90s isekai gems: Magic Knight Rayearth and Vision of Escaflowne

Late 90s: Brain-Powerd (not a typo) happened and it’s a shame no one remembers it. I’ve seen it’s influence come up in the 2000s – 2010s.

The 00s seem to be filled with a lot of re-treading of everything that came before but with different cross-genre influences and some of it really damn good but hard to remember because it all kind of blends together.

The 2010s-today: I have no idea what’s happening now b/c I can’t keep up with anything that isn’t Gundam. And why bother when there has been a flood of classic 70s-80s mecha releases—many for the first time in the US—to binge watch?

Knights of Sidonia was cool.

Since I haven’t kept up, I can’t speak to what new mecha anime is like, or why it's less popular (though I have an educated guess). It was gonna happen eventually, and I suspect that the kinds of post-nuclear and Cold War existential dread that informed mecha anime of the 60s-80s has moved on as target audiences grew up. Those lates 80s OVAs, where the stories could be more adult, reflect that growing up (and also Blade Runner’s influence).

I see the 90s as very transitional, includes reactions to the prior eras, but also reflects a lot of angst by Japanese teens and young adults caught up in the after-effects of 80s stagnation, and the constant test-studying to get into the best school to get the best job (if it exists) and figure it all out before you’re 14 so you can pick the best school to test into. Also, salary-man dad works 120 hours a week and is never home. Get in the Angst-bot Shinji.

Excluding the stand-out brands that survived their respective eras: Gundam, Macross, Braves series, Mazinger Z, Getter Robo, Evangelion; there’s not much other ground that can be covered right now that would warrant a series. The franchise mecha shows are grounded in their respective niches. It’s kind of odd that there isn’t an isekai mecha franchise, b/c that’s a niche that hasn’t been owned in the way that the other niches have (unless maybe Machine Hero Wataru is still a Thing?)

It’s worth mentioning that Sport Anime has really been having a moment for almost a decade now, and that’s super interesting to compare against isekai. Isekai about dungeon slimes or whatever vs literal horse-girls racing each other like high-school track. Thanks Japan, are y’all all right over there?

A few last things:

The success of Super Robot Wars tells me that mecha genre isn’t dying. Consider the ages of players. How many of them actually grew up watching Yuusha Raideen (aka Yūsha Raideen / Raideen the Brave)? There is an SRW manga anthology series, and loads of gachapon and collector’s grade mecha figures from old mecha anime get released with regularity. Someone’s buying that all that shit.

SRW is nearly 20 years old now, and they are still making video games that do one thing really well: rotate a 40 year old cast of everyone’s favorite robots into a battle strategy game held together by a duct-tape plot that doesn’t take itself too seriously. The games are fun, and it’s cool to put all these mecha into the same field. It’s really great to see older shows that will never be remade have little cut scenes in a newer animation style that still feels like the originals.

There’s also the old staple that started it all: the tokusatsu genre of live-action Super Sentai shows (e.g. Power Rangers). They’ve been making the Super Sentai Series since 1975, and there’s still fun to be had watching color-coded warriors use special powers/tech to summon forth some combining mecha to do battle with rubber suit monsters from outer-space. The effects are much better these days, but it’s the same formula, year after year and people still love it.

So with respect to mecha, I think what’s died or dying, is that people are afraid to have shameless child-like fun with giant robots. The genre got too serious and too angsty (and too horny without the grown-up edge of 80s OVA Tits & Tentacles mecha). The franchises carved their niches and aren’t going anywhere, while the genre survives in video games and collectables.

A lot of that shameless fun has moved into other genres, because nothing else explains a title like: “Is It Wrong To Pick Up Girl’s In The Dungeon?” or the nearly-ecchi concept behind the sports anime “Keijo!!!!!”. But that kind of fun is less child-like and more self-deprecating or pervy-humor. Both sports and isekai anime have their serious side, but seem to be dominated by stories that don’t take themselves too seriously, or like Yuri on Ice, aren’t afraid to take a concept that no one ever saw coming, and shape it into a good story.

I eagerly await a mecha sports anime (wait, no, I think that already happened), and I’d love to see a knock-out isekai mecha anime again. I think it will happen eventually, but probably not from Toei or Sunrise. If Tatsunoko could get beyond Moe Idols In Space, then the Macross franchise already has everything it needs to do a isekai series. That would be rad.

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[justforbooks]

If Stan Lee revolutionized the comic book world in the 1960s, which he did, he left as big a stamp — maybe bigger — on the even wider pop culture landscape of today.

Think of “Spider-Man,” the blockbuster movie franchise and Broadway spectacle. Think of “Iron Man,” another Hollywood gold-mine series personified by its star, Robert Downey Jr. Think of “Black Panther,” the box-office superhero smash that shattered big screen racial barriers in the process.

And that is to say nothing of the Hulk, the X-Men, Thor and other film and television juggernauts that have stirred the popular imagination and made many people very rich.

If all that entertainment product can be traced to one person, it would be Stan Lee, who died in Los Angeles on Monday at 95. From a cluttered office on Madison Avenue in Manhattan in the 1960s, he helped conjure a lineup of pulp-fiction heroes that has come to define much of popular culture in the early 21st century.

Mr. Lee was a central player in the creation of those characters and more, all properties of Marvel Comics. Indeed, he was for many the embodiment of Marvel, if not comic books in general, overseeing the company’s emergence as an international media behemoth. A writer, editor, publisher, Hollywood executive and tireless promoter (of Marvel and of himself), he played a critical role in what comics fans call the medium’s silver age.

Many believe that Marvel, under his leadership and infused with his colorful voice, crystallized that era, one of exploding sales, increasingly complex characters and stories, and growing cultural legitimacy for the medium. (Marvel’s chief competitor at the time, National Periodical Publications, now known as DC — the home of Superman and Batman, among other characters — augured this period, with its 1956 update of its superhero the Flash, but did not define it.)

Under Mr. Lee, Marvel transformed the comic book world by imbuing its characters with the self-doubts and neuroses of average people, as well an awareness of trends and social causes and, often, a sense of humor.

In humanizing his heroes, giving them character flaws and insecurities that belied their supernatural strengths, Mr. Lee tried “to make them real flesh-and-blood characters with personality,” he told The Washington Post in 1992.

Energetic, gregarious, optimistic and alternately grandiose and self-effacing, Mr. Lee was an effective salesman, employing a Barnumesque syntax in print (“Face front, true believer!” “Make mine Marvel!”) to market Marvel’s products to a rabid following.

He charmed readers with jokey, conspiratorial comments and asterisked asides in narrative panels, often referring them to previous issues. In 2003 he told The Los Angeles Times, “I wanted the reader to feel we were all friends, that we were sharing some private fun that the outside world wasn’t aware of.”

Though Mr. Lee was often criticized for his role in denying rights and royalties to his artistic collaborators , his involvement in the conception of many of Marvel’s best-known characters is indisputable.

He was born Stanley Martin Lieber on Dec. 28, 1922, in Manhattan, the older of two sons born to Jack Lieber, an occasionally employed dress cutter, and Celia (Solomon) Lieber, both immigrants from Romania. The family moved to the Bronx.

Stanley began reading Shakespeare at 10 while also devouring pulp magazines, the novels of Arthur Conan Doyle, Edgar Rice Burroughs and Mark Twain, and the swashbuckler movies of Errol Flynn.

He graduated at 17 from DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx and aspired to be a writer of serious literature. He was set on the path to becoming a different kind of writer when, after a few false starts at other jobs, he was hired at Timely Publications, a company owned by Martin Goodman, a relative who had made his name in pulp magazines and was entering the comics field.

Mr. Lee was initially paid $8 a week as an office gofer. Eventually he was writing and editing stories, many in the superhero genre.

At Timely he worked with the artist Jack Kirby (1917-94), who, with a writing partner, Joe Simon, had created the hit character Captain America, and who would eventually play a vital role in Mr. Lee’s career. When Mr. Simon and Mr. Kirby, Timely’s hottest stars, were lured away by a rival company, Mr. Lee was appointed chief editor.

As a writer, Mr. Lee could be startlingly prolific. “Almost everything I’ve ever written I could finish at one sitting,” he once said. “I’m a fast writer. Maybe not the best, but the fastest.”

Mr. Lee used several pseudonyms to give the impression that Marvel had a large stable of writers; the name that stuck was simply his first name split in two. (In the 1970s, he legally changed Lieber to Lee.)

During World War II, Mr. Lee wrote training manuals stateside in the Army Signal Corps while moonlighting as a comics writer. In 1947, he married Joan Boocock, a former model who had moved to New York from her native England.

His daughter Joan Celia Lee, who is known as J. C., was born in 1950; another daughter, Jan, died three days after birth in 1953. Mr. Lee’s wife died in 2017.

A lawyer for Ms. Lee, Kirk Schenck, confirmed Mr. Lee’s death, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

In addition to his daughter, he is survived by Ms. Lee and his younger brother, Larry Lieber, who drew the “Amazing Spider-Man” syndicated newspaper strip for years.

In the mid-1940s, the peak of the golden age of comic books, sales boomed. But later, as plots and characters turned increasingly lurid (especially at EC, a Marvel competitor that published titles like Tales From the Crypt and The Vault of Horror), many adults clamored for censorship. In 1954, a Senate subcommittee led by the Tennessee Democrat Estes Kefauver held hearings investigating allegations that comics promoted immorality and juvenile delinquency.

Feeding the senator’s crusade was the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham’s 1954 anti-comics jeremiad, “Seduction of the Innocent.” Among other claims, the book contended that DC’s “Batman stories” — featuring the team of Batman and Robin — were “psychologically homosexual.”

Choosing to police itself rather than accept legislation, the comics industry established the Comics Code Authority to ensure wholesome content. Gore and moral ambiguity were out, but so largely were wit, literary influences and attention to social issues. Innocuous cookie-cutter exercises in genre were in.

Many found the sanitized comics boring, and — with the new medium of television providing competition — readership, which at one point had reached 600 million sales annually, declined by almost three-quarters within a few years.

With the dimming of superhero comics’ golden age, Mr. Lee tired of grinding out generic humor, romance, western and monster stories for what had by then become Atlas Comics. Reaching a career impasse in his 30s, he was encouraged by his wife to write the comics he wanted to, not merely what was considered marketable. And Mr. Goodman, his boss, spurred by the popularity of a rebooted Flash (and later Green Lantern) at DC, wanted him to revisit superheroes.

Mr. Lee took Mr. Goodman up on his suggestion, but he carried its implications much further.

In 1961, Mr. Lee and Mr. Kirby — whom he had brought back years before to the company, now known as Marvel — produced the first issue of The Fantastic Four, about a superpowered team with humanizing dimensions: nonsecret identities, internal squabbles and, in the orange-rock-skinned Thing, self-torment. It was a hit.

Other Marvel titles — like the Lee-Kirby creation The Incredible Hulk, a modern Jekyll-and-Hyde story about a decent man transformed by radiation into a monster — offered a similar template. The quintessential Lee hero, introduced in 1962 and created with the artist Steve Ditko (1927-2018), was Spider-Man.

A timid high school intellectual who gained his powers when bitten by a radioactive spider, Spider-Man was prone to soul-searching, leavened with wisecracks — a key to the character’s lasting popularity across multiple entertainment platforms, including movies and a Broadway musical.

Mr. Lee’s dialogue encompassed Catskills shtick, like Spider-Man’s patter in battle; Elizabethan idioms, like Thor’s; and working-class Lower East Side swagger, like the Thing’s. It could also include dime-store poetry, as in this eco-oratory about humans, uttered by the Silver Surfer, a space alien:

“And yet — in their uncontrollable insanity — in their unforgivable blindness — they seek to destroy this shining jewel — this softly spinning gem — this tiny blessed sphere — which men call Earth!”

Mr. Lee practiced what he called the Marvel method: Instead of handing artists scripts to illustrate, he summarized stories and let the artists draw them and fill in plot details as they chose. He then added sound effects and dialogue. Sometimes he would discover on penciled pages that new characters had been added to the narrative. Such surprises (like the Silver Surfer, a Kirby creation and a Lee favorite) would lead to questions of character ownership.

Mr. Lee was often faulted for not adequately acknowledging the contributions of his illustrators, especially Mr. Kirby. Spider-Man became Marvel’s best-known property, but Mr. Ditko, its co-creator, quit Marvel in bitterness in 1966. Mr. Kirby, who visually designed countless characters, left in 1969. Though he reunited with Mr. Lee for a Silver Surfer graphic novel in 1978, their heyday had ended.

Many comic fans believe that Mr. Kirby was wrongly deprived of royalties and original artwork in his lifetime, and for years the Kirby estate sought to acquire rights to characters that Mr. Kirby and Mr. Lee had created together. Mr. Kirby’s heirs were long rebuffed in court on the grounds that he had done “work for hire” — in other words, that he had essentially sold his art without expecting royalties.

In September 2014, Marvel and the Kirby estate reached a settlement. Mr. Lee and Mr. Kirby now both receive credit on numerous screen productions based on their work.

Mr. Lee moved to Los Angeles in 1980 to develop Marvel properties, but most of his attempts at live-action television and movies were disappointing. (The series “The Incredible Hulk,” seen on CBS from 1978 to 1982, was an exception.)

Avi Arad, an executive at Toy Biz, a company in which Marvel had bought a controlling interest, began to revive the company’s Hollywood fortunes, particularly with an animated “X-Men” series on Fox, which ran from 1992 to 1997. (Its success helped pave the way for the live-action big-screen “X-Men” franchise, which has flourished since its first installment, in 2000.)

In the late 1990s, Mr. Lee was named chairman emeritus at Marvel and began to explore outside projects. While his personal appearances (including charging fans $120 for an autograph) were one source of income, later attempts to create wholly owned superhero properties foundered. Stan Lee Media, a digital content start-up, crashed in 2000 and landed his business partner, Peter F. Paul, in prison for securities fraud. (Mr. Lee was never charged.)

In 2001, Mr. Lee started POW! Entertainment (the initials stand for “purveyors of wonder”), but he received almost no income from Marvel movies and TV series until he won a court fight with Marvel Enterprises in 2005, leading to an undisclosed settlement costing Marvel $10 million. In 2009, the Walt Disney Company, which had agreed to pay $4 billion to acquire Marvel, announced that it had paid $2.5 million to increase its stake in POW!

In Mr. Lee’s final years, after the death of his wife, the circumstances of his business affairs and contentious financial relationship with his surviving daughter attracted attention in the news media. In 2018, Mr. Lee was embroiled in disputes with POW!, and The Daily Beast and The Hollywood Reporter ran accounts of fierce infighting among Mr. Lee’s daughter, household staff and business advisers. The Hollywood Reporter claimed “elder abuse.”

In February 2018, Mr. Lee signed a notarized document declaring that three men — a lawyer, a caretaker of Mr. Lee’s and a dealer in memorabilia — had “insinuated themselves into relationships with J. C. for an ulterior motive and purpose,” to “gain control over my assets, property and money.” He later withdrew his claim, but longtime aides of his — an assistant, an accountant and a housekeeper — were either dismissed or greatly limited in their contact with him.

In a profile in The New York Times in April, a cheerful Mr. Lee said, “I’m the luckiest guy in the world,” adding that “my daughter has been a great help to me” and that “life is pretty good” — although he admitted in that same interview, “I’ve been very careless with money.”

Marvel movies, however, have proved a cash cow for major studios, if not so much for Mr. Lee. With the blockbuster “Spider-Man” in 2002, Marvel superhero films hit their stride. Such movies (including franchises starring Iron Man, Thor and the superhero team the Avengers, to name but three) together had grossed more than $24 billion worldwide as of April.

“Black Panther,” the first Marvel movie directed by an African-American (Ryan Coogler) and starring an almost all-black cast, took in about $201.8 million domestically when it opened over the four-day Presidents’ Day weekend this year, the fifth-biggest opening of all time.

Many other film properties are in development, in addition to sequels in established franchises. Characters Mr. Lee had a hand in creating now enjoy a degree of cultural penetration they have never had before.

Mr. Lee wrote a slim memoir, “Excelsior! The Amazing Life of Stan Lee,” with George Mair, published in 2002. His 2015 book, “Amazing Fantastic Incredible: A Marvelous Memoir” (written with Peter David and illustrated in comic-book form by Colleen Doran), pays abundant credit to the artists many fans believed he had shortchanged years before.

Recent Marvel films and TV shows have also often credited Mr. Lee’s former collaborators; Mr. Lee himself has almost always received an executive producer credit. His cameo appearances in them became something of a tradition. (Even “Teen Titans Go! to the Movies,” an animated feature in 2018 about a DC superteam, had more than one Lee cameo.) TV shows bearing his name or presence have included the reality series “Stan Lee’s Superhumans” and the competition show “Who Wants to Be a Superhero?”

Mr. Lee’s unwavering energy suggested that he possessed superpowers himself. (In his 90s he had a Twitter account, @TheRealStanlee.) And the National Endowment for the Arts acknowledged as much when it awarded him a National Medal of Arts in 2008. But he was frustrated, like all humans, by mortality.

“I want to do more movies, I want to do more television, more DVDs, more multi-sodes, I want to do more lecturing, I want to do more of everything I’m doing,” he said in “With Great Power …: The Stan Lee Story,” a 2010 television documentary. “The only problem is time. I just wish there were more time.”

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[wizkidzacademy]

Play School Franchise Business Opportunity- Wizkidz Academy

Starting a Playschool Franchise Business in Greater Noida

If you are interested in starting a Playschool franchise business in Greater Noida, Faridabad & Gurgaon you need to consider a few factors before you invest your money. The fees you charge for the services you offer will depend on the type of business you start. Regular daycares and playschools can charge monthly fees of about two thousand to three thousand dollars per student. One-time admission fees can be as high as fifteen thousand dollars or more per student. This means that you can book a profit of thirty thirty-five percent of your total revenue for each of the 60 or more regular students you enroll.

Play School franchise business at Faridabad Starting a Play School franchise in Faridabad requires a minimal amount of startup capital and offers high returns on investment. The playschool industry in India is estimated to be worth $1 billion, making it a lucrative opportunity to enter. What's more, Play School franchise fees are significantly lower than other franchises, making your investment cost much lower.

Play schools have become a popular part of modern early childhood education. As a result, the Play School franchise model is designed to provide an affordable and sustainable way to start a play school. WizKidz Academy has created a Play School franchise business opportunity in Faridabad that can help franchisees maximize revenue and create an exceptional educational environment for young children.

Play School franchise business at Greater Noida Starting a Play School franchise business in Greater Noida is an ideal business opportunity for people looking for a low-cost investment that yields high profits. Wizkidz Academy, one of India's leading preschool franchises, offers franchise opportunities for play schools in the Greater Noida area. The brand has become a household name for preschool education in the country.

The franchise agreement is 6 years long and offers zero royalty fees. This is the best option for new entrepreneurs who are looking for a business opportunity without a huge investment. The investment ranges from Rs. 5 to 12 lakhs for a fully-fledged franchise, depending on the preschool franchise business model.

Play School franchise business at Gurgaon If you're looking to start a Play School franchise business in Gurgaon, you'll find a number of options available. One such option is Wizkidz Academy, a leading play school chain in India.

Play schools are a great business opportunity that offers the highest returns. They are recession-proof, which means that you'll never have to worry about closing your business during tough economic times. Plus, this type of business requires a low capital investment and a relatively short turnaround time.

The human brain is developed at its fastest rate during the first five years of life. This is the time when it develops its basic skills and builds the foundation for learning, behavior, and health. A good play school franchise provides children with the necessary training and education to prepare them for life in a competitive world.

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Name- Wizkidz Academy Address- 812, Indra Prakash Building 21, Barakhamba Road, New Delhi -110001 Phone- 9911604092 Website- https://www.wizkidz-academy.com

[wazafam]

Ever since Bela Lugosi donned the cape to portray Dracula in 1931, vampires have become a symbol of sexy sophistication in film. As the decades passed, their wardrobes changed to fit evolving attitudes in cinema, with many designed to more closely resemble "creatures of the night" than charming sophisticates. Modern movies like Twilight shied away from making their vampires stuck clinging to the edifice of decadent pasts, instead reflecting the fashions of the day.

RELATED: Dracula & 9 Other Horror Movies From The 1930s (That Are Still Scary Today)

For all the fans who welcomed the changes to vampire aesthetic, others no doubt felt they lacked complexity. Vampires beyond Dracula were given a wide berth and a lot of creative license (like werewolf-hunter Selene from Underworld), especially as vampires in movies started to use fashion to convey not just their personalities, but the passage of time, and even their perspective on immortality. For every iconic vampire in movie history, there's another lacking imagination, and the most stylish are not stuck in time, but timeless.

10 Worst: Edward Cullen

Many vampires have blended in with their human victims - it's a perfectly logical way to maintain steady access to their food supply. Even so, elder vampires tend to find ways to retain a modicum of style, usually accumulated over their decades -if not centuries- on Earth. But that's not the case with Edward Cullen, the boyish vampire who's over 100 years old when Bella meets him in Twilight. 

Despite having several college degrees, Edward is forced to go to high school in an effort to maintain his cover as a human in every area his family moves to, which means he's a slave to the trends of teenagers lest he look out of place. While this makes him continuously on trend, it ensures he's completely lacking in style.

9 David

For too long vampires had been seen as sophisticated aristocrats stalking Victorian parlors, making lace-covered ladies reach for their smelling salts. With The Lost Boys, a new vampire was born; a bad boy bloodsucker in a leather jacket. No one personified this new incarnation more than David, the leader of a clan of creatures whose hunting grounds included the teenagers at the Santa Clarita boardwalk.

RELATED: The Lost Boys: 10 Hidden Details Behind The Costumes

Wearing a black trenchcoat and fingerless gloves, David sat atop his motorcycle, single earring glinting in the moonlight, like a king of chaos. His vampire was bestial, reckless, and modern, making him as iconic as the original Prince of Darkness.

8 Lestat

Whatever era he found himself in, Lestat was going to rule the night. Where once the Brat Prince dressed the part of a foppish dandy in Interview with a Vampire, pursued by pitchfork-wielding peasants, he delighted the world as a rockstar in Queen of the Damned, pursued by mall goths in every continent.

Lestat had fun with fashion and was narcissistic enough to know he looked good in whatever were the latest fashions, but no matter if he was wearing leather or lace, he was a truly dangerous hunter who could croon a power ballad at a fan and then rip their heart out without a second thought.

7 Maximilian

Eddie Murphy turned on the charm to play Maximilian, the royal who arrives in Brooklyn to find his queen (in a little homage to his other classic Coming to America). The horror-comedy Vampire in Brooklyn showcased Murphy at his most seductive and unhinged in a wardrobe that redefined modern gothic elegance, even if the movie itself wasn't well-received.

Blacula walked so Vampire in Brooklyn could run, and while there's reverence to the classic blaxploitation movie in its frames, Murphy wisely chose to make his vampire lover more dangerous, scintillating, and sophisticated.

6 Akasha

For being the very first vampire in existence and centuries old, Akasha looked amazing for her age in Queen of the Damned.��When she was awoken from her eternal slumber and went on her mission to find Lestat, she didn't bother trying to blend in with the mere mortals around her.

RELATED: The 5 Best Movie Vampires (& The 5 Worst)

Akasha highlighted her reputation as the highest echelon of vampire society with her amazing costume, inspired by the royalty of Ancient Egypt, a beautiful ensemble that belied her true savagery as she destroyed anyone in the way of making Lestat her consort.

5 Barnabas Collins

Emerging from his underwater sanctum like some sepulchral member of high society, Barnabas Collins is a man out of time but not out of style when he comes to claim his ancestral home from a conniving witch. The dashing, mysterious figure from the '60s soap opera Dark Shadows appears in the Tim Burton movie of the same name with a dramatic entrance worthy of his long lineage.

While it may be the swinging 1960's and not the 1860's, no one can deny that the vestments and glittering accessories Barnabas wears aren't decadent. From his rings and brooches to the top of his walking cane, he cuts a fabulous silhouette.

4 Selene

Like Keifer Sutherland did in The Lost Boys, Kate Beckinsale's Selene changed what it meant to be a vampire for a new generation. In her sleek leather corseted catsuit, tall boots, and long leather trench coat, she redefined what it meant to be an elegant killer.

Selene wore beautiful clothing designed for form as much as function, and nothing about her attire hindered her ability to kick ass. Other members of her clan might have had more ornamental livery, but Selene's ensembles consistently met in the middle of stylish and utilitarian. Throughout the Underworld franchise, her outfit even received a few fashionable updates.

3 Eve

The ethereal Tilda Swinton has played an ageless entity many times throughout her career, most poignantly in Orlando and most divisively in Doctor Strange, but it's in Only Lovers Left Alive that she's at her most arresting. As Eve the vampire opposite Tom Hiddleston's Adam, she is a perfect amalgamation of timeless grace and reckless abandon.

RELATED: 10 Underrated Vampire Movies To Watch This Halloween

With her bed head hair, French tucked shirts, sweeping Bohemian robes, and pair of shades, she's a vampire who probably did the opulent Old World thing, did the contemporary thing, and now exists somewhere in the middle.

2 Dracula

Dracula is not only one of the most prominent literary figures of all time, but one of the most iconic figures in horror movie history, too. He has been portrayed as both an elegant lord and a lustful lothario, but in each iteration, he's always the most well-dressed person in the room. Part of Dracula's enduring appeal is the fact that beneath his refined persona lurks a bloodthirsty beast.

Whether he's seen as a gentlemanly count in Dracula and Dracula: Prince of Darkness, a bloodthirsty warlord in Dracula: Untold, or as a time-weary romantic in Bram Stoker's Dracula, he represents the apex of vampire fashion in any iteration.

1 Best: Miriam Blaylock

While it might be difficult to steal the spotlight from David Bowie, the inimitable Catherine Deneuve does just that in The Hunger, as an elegant vampire who has promised to turn him into a creature of the night but delights in his yearning.

Being a vampire has never looked as effortlessly sophisticated, ethereal, and dangerous as it does when Miriam Blaylock is on screen, a powerful creature that wields the power to control destinies in her gloved hand.

NEXT: Movie Vampires: Ranked From Least To Most Powerful

Movie Vampires: Ranked From Best To Worst Dressed | ScreenRant from https://ift.tt/3dm19ih

[anyasmith]

music cultures and economics assignment

opinion piece: is pop music original?

whenever i hear a song for the first time first, i naturally assume it is original and fresh from the artists’ mind. but how can this really be the case? with more than 97 million songs in the world, surely, it’s unlikely that each song is truly original. how could they not have been influenced by others that came before? how can they be unique without any crossovers and links to other songs? how can they all be truly original in structure, lyric and concept?

as a music rep in my old school, i often helped out in music classes, supporting children learning the blues, rhythm and witnessing fist-hand their experiences with new instruments and genres. one particular session left a lasting impression on my mind. we were teaching a series of lessons investigating the 4 main chord of pop music today, specifically how the songs in the charts can easily be mashed up. we watched a youtube video by the axis of awesome which has a medley of 36 songs, featuring songs from artists such as rhianna and train, all over the same 4 chords; C, G, Am, F. the aim of the lesson was to get the children to consider the question ‘is pop music too basic?’. by the end of the lesson, i too, was asking the same question! just by repeating the 4 chords, the axis of awesome could play a myriad of tracks, suggesting songs cannot be as original as i had first thought.

adorno’s belief on structure supports the idea that pop songs are not original. he believed that every pop song all followed the same basic song formula, and this is what made them standardised. being able to merge (or mash-up) popular songs together over only 4 chords, shows the underlying structure of the pieces are the same and therefore not original. adorno also believed that listeners were largely unaware of the similarity between the songs, engendering a feeling of security and reassured as nothing was unexpected. this could suggest why there are so many songs with the same basic structure and why they can all fit into one another so cleanly.

i am inclined to agree with adorno regarding music making listeners feel secure. i remember clearly an experience i had during a concert that i played in. a guest musician, roland taylor, was performing a new piece he recently had written. the concert which was being held in a church and had followed, until the point of taylor’s performance, a familiar ‘churchy’ style with uplifting melodies and haunting instrumental sections. taylor performed and the audience began to look a little bewildered and confused. taylor describes his style as ‘post-minimalist’, a style that was unfamiliar to the audience and as a result they are not keen. there was none of the expected rhythms and reassuring nuance which they had been enjoying. at the time, i thought it was definitely an original piece but having recently looked at taylor’s bio, i see that even he, with his extraordinary compositions, lists specific artists, early music, jazz and bach as being among his influences suggesting that even music which is nothing like we have previously experienced must have its roots in what has come before.

music for many is a creative outlet. whether its lyrics from the heart or a solo flute sighing its way through the piece, music is often a way for an artist to release their feelings. mac miller, for example, poured his heart out in the album ‘circles’. this was released after he died but shows how he was feeling before he passed and the thoughts he had at that point in his life. the song ‘good news’ especially shows how he was feeling at the time before his death and sounds like a cry for help. surely this is original as it’s his own thoughts and from his own experiences? i like this album as i can relate to some of the lyrics and makes me think about what others feel. however, i question whether this means that the piece becomes unoriginal as the listeners may begin to be influenced to feel the same emotion as the songwriter and therefore making the song standardised? i don’t fully believe this is the case as the song allows us to feel the emotions the artists want us to evoke. it also allows us to connect on a different level with the artist, with each listener creates their own unique connection according to their own feelings and circumstances.  

different genres of music have different standard structures that set them apart from each other, but which keeps them musically indifferent within their own genre. for example, blues music typically has the same features of 12-bar blues and a walking bass whilst rock music typically features an electric guitar and male vocals. adorno believed that popular music contains certain elements such as a verse or chorus which can be changed without affecting the piece. he believed that even if the chords behind the basic structure of the verse are different or the different rock riff is changed, for example, the overall piece is structurally the same and therefore standardised.

new improvements in technology have fuelled franchising and turned music into a product. music has developed quickly over a short space of time and now can be accessed by a larger demographic. music, today, is distributed on a mass scale on sites such as spotify and apple music, enabling music to be found at the drop of a hat. this easy access has allowed music production to be accelerated. technology has also been created to cater to our specific taste and preferences. for example, i frequently listen to rex orange county and as a result, apple music creates playlists for me with work by similar artists so i can discover more music in that style, which i will likely enjoy. while such services could be deemed useful, they accelerate the rate of music distribution and thus, arguably, eliminating the need for originality.

adorno believes that mass-production is yet another reason why music has become unoriginal and standardised. ‘new’ music is often heard by many different people before it ends up as a product, producer, record label etc. this process can lead to the originality of the artist to become lost, as often the process of producing the song can change the fundamental originality of it in order to turn it into a marketable product. creativity and new concepts become obsolete.

adorno believes that although such “industrial” music production and distribution is making music standardised, the product is still individualistic in certain social aspects, such as lady gaga’s whacky fashion choices. lady gaga is a well-known figure within the music industry and has produced 6 albums all in different genres. while she maybe creatively exploring the different genres, i can’t help but feel like it’s a clever marketing ploy used to reach a larger demographic and therefore earning more royalties. this supports the argument that music is now a product which can be standardised rather than an artform used to express originality of thought and talent.

so, I am left with the question: is popular music original?  i agree with adorno’s view that pop music is unoriginal due to its similar structure. the fact that axis of awesome found 36 songs (and probably plenty more now) that fit so cleanly with one another, cannot just be down to a fluke. there must be a basic song formula that they all follow they are unoriginal. i also agree that mass-production, aided by advancements in technology, is increasing unoriginality within the music industry as music becomes more as a marketable good seeking for the new markets and demographics. however, music is full of raw emotions shared by the artist to the listener. the individual element and personalisation of such outpouring certainly cannot be standardised and with hundreds of new genres that are completely different from one another that ‘popular music’ had become so broad, it’s hard to standardise. i personally don’t believe we will ever know if all music is truly original, but let’s hope that at least some of is!

word count: 1,362

academic piece: to what extent is pop music standardised?

pop music, according to shuker 2013, “defies precise, straightforward definition [since] the criteria for what counts as popular, and their application to specific musical styles and genres, are open to considerable debate” (shuker 2013, p. 5).  for the purpose of this essay, the definition of popular music is ‘music that is ‘popular’ in the sense of being ‘of the people’, i.e., music that belongs to ordinary people and expresses their interests and concerns (wall, 2013 p. 175).

whilst it is difficult to state with absolute certainty whether popular music is standardised or not and indeed there are several credible arguments for both sides of the debate, it can be argued that, to a large extent, pop music is standardised as it broadly follows the same basic song formula. theodor w. adorno is a german philosopher, musicologist and composer best known for his critical theory of society and states “best known is the rule that the chorus consists of thirty-two bars and that the range is limited to one octave and one note.” (1941) this suggests that every song has been written based on this statement and using the same formula. if this is true, it may be one explanation as to why pop music is so commonly listened to; the listener is comforted by the repeated structure and enjoys the familiarity of the songs. adorno further supports this idea when he says, “the listener can supply the "framework" automatically, since it is a mere musical automatism itself” (1941). this shows that not only is pop music standardised within the same structure but the listener. although it could be conversely be argued that pop music can’t be standardised as there are so many sub-genres of music. adorno counters his hypothesis in his essay ‘on popular music’ where he states that the listeners, regardless of the song, still stays “openly connected with the underlying scheme”, which is the basic pop formula. therefore, ‘the listeners always feel on the safe ground’ as they are familiar with the structure and the basic formula that makes up popular music.

another argument which gives weight to the idea of pop music being standardised is pseudo-individualisation. pseudo-individualisation directly translates to the ‘illusion of choice’ and is “the standardization of cultural production and of audience reaction to contemporary culture.” (o’brien and szeman, 2017, p 120). adorno states that “by pseudo-individualisation we mean endowing cultural mass production with the halo of free choice or open market on the basis of standardisation itself." (1941) this suggests that artists now are referred to as cultural goods and therefore standardised as they become a product. hains reinforces this idea when he states that “sameness is disguised by product design and marketing techniques which present the illusion of freedom and choice” (2018), meaning that disguising the artist through marketing and production design makes the listener forget that the music is standardised, so the music becomes a product rather than a creative concept and the artists are tuned into idols rather than individuals. a clear example of pseudo-individualisation is with benny goodman and guy lombardo, both are mentioned by name in adorno’s ‘on popular music’. he says, “the listener is quickly able to distinguish the types of music and even the performing band, this in spite of the fundamental identity of the material and the great similarity of the presentations apart from their emphasized distinguishing trademarks.” (1941). suggesting that while both artists have different genres, “swing and sweet” (adorno, 1941), and their music is perceived as different, they are in fact, formulaic and therefore are standardised which is the reason as to why they became popular.

there are many further examples of adorno’s concept of standardisation, one such being the songs of a UK girl band little mix who rose to fame after winning the x-factor television programme in 2011 and have now sold over 50 million albums worldwide. their hit song ‘shout out to my ex’ is a clear example of standardisation.  it sounds undeniably similar to ‘ugly heart’ by G.R.L. this similarity has been commented on by both music critics and fans alike who highlighted that the melody and harmony of the chorus in both songs sound almost identical. the very public controversy which ensued prompted little mix during an interview with Qmusic (a belgian radio station) to state “rvery song is going to have a similar chord sequence, slightly similar lyrics and melodied- it happens all the time.” (corner, l. 2016, digital spy report). such well known examples support adorno’s theory that elements of a popular song can be interchangeable and included in another. plagiarism is also a good example of standardisation. plagiarism is when you take other people’s work and use it as your own and has happened a lot within in the music industry. an example is that of the estate of marvin gaye who successfully sued robin thicke and pharrell williams for $5million following the release of the song ‘blurred lines’ because they stated, the track copied marvin gaye’s song ‘got to give it up’ (savage, 2018, bbcReport). such examples show clearly that adorno’s theory of standardisation and pseudo-individualisation do occur frequently in popular music.

when considering adorno’s research, it is important to remember that there are many criticisms of his work which should be considered. adorno has been criticised for the way in which he writes, as his style isn’t easily comprehensible. adorno is aware of this and has stated he does it on purpose because he wants people to interpret his work in their own way and to defy identity thinking. (fagan, n.d). another limitation is temporal validity. adorno’s ‘on popular music’ was written in 1941 when technology wasn’t an influencing factor in regard to releasing music. technology has advanced significantly since 1940s and has accelerated the release of new music. in the 1940s, radio was perceived as the most popular way of listening to music. today, more than 89% of people stream music online (IPPI, 2019). music nowadays is easier to find, it reaches a wider range of people and has sparked the creation of new genres. according to the guardian, there are currently in excess of “1,264 genres that make modern music” (2014) implying that music is now becoming less standardised due to the wider range of genres making up the current ‘pop music’ culture. A further result of technological advances is the increase in production of music which could also suggest why there are so many sub genres of music. adorno disputes mass production being a cause of standardisation stating, “the production of popular music can be called 'industrial' only in its promotion and distribution, whereas the act of producing a song-hit still remains in a handicraft stage” and that it is "still 'individualistic' in its social mode of production." (1941).  this suggests that pop music is original when presented to the public due to different chords and melody but isn’t original when it come to the generic basis of the song itself.  

while adorno’s research lacks in temporal activity and is considered by many to be extreme and opinionated, we must take into account that so far, his research has stayed relevant and still applies to popular culture. also, even though there are many different styles of genres of music, they still largely follow the same structure and include many of the same elements such as verse, chorus or instrumental section.

in conclusion, popular music can be seen to be standardised as it follows the same basic song structure and turns music into a product which can be standardised (pseudo-individualisation). while we must take into account adorno’s research lacks in temporal validity and the new advances of technology may change things, standardisation is apparent within the music culture today.

word count: 1,288

bibliography:

adorno, t (1941) ‘on popular music’ available at: http://www.icce.rug.nl/~soundscapes/DATABASES/SWA/On_popular_music_1.shtml (accessed 19 november 2020)

corner, l. ‘little ,ix respond to GRL comparisons on new single: “stop trying to get publicity”’ digital spy, 24 october 2016 available at: https://www.digitalspy.com/music/a811967/little-mix-respond-to-grl-comparisons-on-new-single-shout-out-to-my-ex/ (accessed 29 november 2020)

fagan, a. (no date) theodor adorno available at: https://iep.utm.edu/adorno/#H6 (accessed on 25 november 2020)

fitzpatrick, r. ‘from charred death to deep filthstep: the 1,264 genres that make modern music’. The guardian, 4 september 2014 available at: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/sep/04/-sp-from-charred-death-to-deep-filthstep-the-1264-genres-that-make-modern-music (accessed 25 november 2020)

hains, s. (2018) adorno and pseudo-Individualisation available at: http://samhains.com/blog/mcc/2018/06/16/adorno-pseudo-individualization.html (accessed 25 november 2020)

IFPI (2019). music listening report 2019. available at: https://www.ifpi.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Music-Listening-2019-1.pdf (accessed on 1 october 2020)

o’brien, s. and szeman, s. (2017) popular culture: a user’s guide, page 120

savage, m. ‘blurred lines: marvin Ggaye’s family keeps $5m payout’. bbc news, 22 march 2018 available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-43497970  (accessed on 25 november 2020)

shuker, r. (2013) popular music page 5 wall, t. (2013) studying popular music culture page 175

overall word count:2,650

-04/12/20

[dubsism]

Today’s Movie: A Woman Called Golda

Year of Release: 1982

Stars: Ingrid Bergman, Ned Beatty, Franklin Cover

Director: Alan Gibson

This movie is not on my list of essential films.

NOTE: This installment of Sports Analogies Hidden In Classic Movies is being done as part of something called The 5th Wonderful Ingrid Bergman Blog-A-Thon being hosted by The Wonderful World of Cinema. She hosted the first blog-a-thon in which I ever participated; you might say she helped create the monster you see now some 90 episodes later.  At one time, I wondered why she kept having me in these events; after all, she has to be smarter than that considering she just earned an advanced degree in “filmy stuff.”  Then I realized her genius…she has me around as my thick-headed slop makes the other participants look that much better 🙂

You can see all the contributors to this blog-a-thon here:

Days One, Two, and Three

The Story:

Have you ever heard the old saying “save the best for last?” No doubt, there are some hardcore Bergman-o-philes who might recoil in horror at what I’m about to suggest, but for my money, Ingrid Bergman’s final performance may very well be one of her best.

For purposes of full disclosure, I’m not the world’s foremost Ingrid Bergman fan. I don’t get far off the “beaten path” when it comes to her work; I couldn’t take a discussion much beyond “Casablanca,” “Gaslight,” or “Notorious.” I could barely tell you if Rossellini is a pasta dish or a director, but I can tell you this. Anybody who does consider themselves a fan of Bergman needs to have this movie in their “watched” folder.

The Necessary Backstory

If it weren’t for “Movie for a Rained-Out Ball Game,” I wouldn’t have discovered this gem either.  Now, you can’t be a “movie snob” and still appreciate “A Woman Called Golda.” Going in, you have to understand this is a “made for television” effort; it has the inherent flaws of such a movie.

First, it’s pretty clear this movie lacked the luxury of a large budget. Second, having such low overhead is why local television stations had this film in the bank ready for the “rainy day.” Lastly, there’s the issue of casting. Most such films have three core characteristics:

1) A Collection of “That Guy” Actors

This is a tactic shared by disaster movies as I explored in the low-budget Martin Milner 1976 TV epic “Flood!” The difference is the price tags on the cast of familiar faces.  “A Woman Called Golda” is no exception.  The first-time viewer of a sufficient age is certainly going to recognize some faces of the time.  If you were a fan of “The Jeffersons,” you might recognize Franklin “Mr. Willis” Cover playing Senator Hubert Humphery.  Fans of the “Star Wars” franchise might recognize this movie’s “Mr. Macy” as General Rieekan from “The Empire Strikes Back;” the guy who looks like he’s wearing throat lozenges on his uniform.  Then’s there’s the ever-present Ned “Squeal Like a Pig” Beatty.

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That’s just for openers. If for no other reason, you need to watch this movie to spot all the familiar faces. This cast features one Oscar winner and four Oscar nominees in a melange of the recognizable. You can even make a drinking game out of spotting them all.

2) A Television Legend

Arguably the biggest legend to date is television history in William Shatner.  But if his first series didn’t become so iconic, Shatner is likely little more than a footnote in the grand scheme of the small screen; he’s forever the guy who sees gremlins on the wing in “The Twilight Zone.”

Let’s be honest, “Star Trek” doesn’t become a staple of television history with out Leonard Nimoy; Shatner lived long and prospered because of “Spock.” In the very same vein as the green-blooded Spock did for Captain Kirk, Nimoy’s presence in this film as Golda Meir’s husband lays the foundation for the capital piece of casting for any film of this ilk…

3) Honest to Goodness Hollywood Royalty (albeit an aging one)

Character actor extraordinaire Robert Loggia’s portrayal of Egyptian President Anwar Sadat offered the opportunity to portray one of the great dynamic characters of all time. Sadat was one of the military officers who staged a coup d’état against King Farouk in 1952. He became prominent in Egyptian politics serving as Vice President and Minister of State under President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Sadat succeeded Nasser as President of Egypt in 1970, the year after Golda Meir became the Prime Minister of Israel.

The problem is Loggia was normally known for playing “Mob” type uber-hoodlums and he simply just wasn’t up to the task of playing a statesman like Sadat.

Frankly, there are times when Loggia’s performance borders on the clownish, but putting him in that role was either the definition of “accidentally successful” or pure, unadulterated genius. If an actor capable of exploring the depth of a character like Anwar Sadat had been cast in that role, it very easily could have forced a pivot in perspective of the whole film.  If they had been able to put Anthony Quinn in that role, they might as well have re-worked the whole picture to “A Man Called Anwar” rather than “A Woman Called Golda.”

In terms of world history, the tales of Anwar Sadat and Golda Meir are inextricably linked, which makes telling the tale of one without making a co-star of the other intrinsically difficult. Besides, as previously mentioned, Paramount Domestic Television only had budget for one Hollywood monarch, and that was Ingrid Bergman.

Even if they hadn’t re-worked the picture, the Sadat character could have easily stolen the movie.  When Sadat comes to power in 1970, he is the leader of a nation orders of magnitude larger and more powerful than Israel.  Not only is that nation thirsty for revenge for the loss of the Sinai Peninsula during the 1967 “Six-Day War,” but the Soviet Union is Egypt’s main source of foreign aid and also wouldn’t mind seeing the Jewish state wiped off the map. Sadat know that being hostile to both the United States and Israel was a hindrance to industrialization and modernization of Egypt, but changing those things was not going to be an “overnight” project.

But by 1973, the Arab states, particularly Syria, Jordan, and the Egyptian Army – those who had lost territory to Israel in 1967 – were ready to unleash the dogs of war yet again in a bid to recapture the Sinai, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights, the West Bank and the other lands lost in the previously. This leads us to the defining moment of Golda Meir’s life.

The Brilliance of Ingrid Bergman

Golda Meir with Anwar Sadat during his visit to Israel in 1977.

“A Woman Called Golda” was a four-hour “made for television” movie originally aired in two-hour halves in 1982.  As the aforementioned “Hollywood Royalty,” Bergman’s main role was to lend gravitas to the film. The film opens in 1977; the scene being Golda Meir has returned to her old school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She is telling the students the story of her life.  Through a series of flashbacks woven together with Bergman’s narrative, the audience is drawn into the story-telling. In one fell swoop, all the problems are solved. The way this movie was made eliminated issues created by the the quirky casting, the also aforementioned “Sadat” problem, and opens the door for Bergman to deliver a tremendous performance for a story which richly deserved it.

Meir was born on May 3, 1898 as Golda Mabovitch in Kiev, Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine). Her father went to find work in America in 1903, and once he had saved enough money, the rest of the family emigrated to Milwaukee in 1906 to escape the ever-present persecution of Jews throughout Europe. Those struggles fed Golda’s dream of an independent Jewish state.  In the meantime, she attended college, became a teacher, met and married Morris Meyerson (played by Leonard Nimoy) in 1917.

Morris and Golda moved to the British Mandate of Palestine (land that would eventually become Israel) in 1921 to live and work on a kibbutz.  While Golda was not performing her duties of picking almonds, planting trees, tending chickens, and running the kitchen, her leadership abilities were noticed. As a result, the other members of the kibbutz chose her as its representative to the General Federation of Labor known as the Histadrut.

Despite the fact they left the kibbutz in 1924, Golda’s rise in the political world would continue.  The couple eventually settled in Jerusalem where they have two children; a son Menachem and a daughter Sarah.

The next step in Golda’s ascension took place in 1928 when she was elected secretary of the Working Women’s Council (Moetzet HaPoalot).  This position required her to spend two years as an emissary in the United States. While this was a major step for her, it also marked the beginning of the end of her marriage to Morris.  The children went with Golda to America, but Morris remained in Jerusalem. Over the next two decades Morris and Golda grew apart, but never divorced; despite their estrangement, they remained married until his death in 1951. The next two decades saw Golda serve in a variety of roles in service of Israel.

Meir with President Kennedy when she was Israel’s Foreign Minister. 1962

By 1969, Meir was in a state of semi-retirement due to health concerns, but after prime minister Levi Eshkol’s sudden death, Meir was elected as his successor.  She took office in March of 1969 and maintained the coalition government between her own Mapai party and two others, the Rafi and Ahdut Ha’Avoda. Eventually, these three would officially merge to form the Israeli Labor Party.

But early in her term as prime minister, Meir eschewed politics to court other world leaders regardless of their ideology with her own vision of peace in the middle east. This included the President of the United States Richard Nixon, Romanian communist dictator Nicolae Ceausesçu, and and Pope Paul VI. In a highly controversial move, Meir even hosted a visit to Israel by West German chancellor Willy Brandt in 1973.

Through Bergman’s portrayal and narration, viewers start to see Meir’s overall strategy of making Israel a sympathetic figure by being the side seeking peace.  This is only exacerbated in the wake of the Palestinian terror attack on the 1972 Munich Olympics in which 11 Israeli athletes were murdered. This strategy becomes pivotal in Meir’s finest moment.

Early in 1973, Meir cemented her relationship with American President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger when she agreed to Kissinger’s peace proposal based on “security versus sovereignty” in which Israel would accept Egyptian sovereignty over all of the Sinai Peninsula, while Egypt would accept Israeli presence in some of the Sinai’s strategic positions. However, this back-fired; in October of 1973 the Arab states began massing troops on the Israeli borders.

Prime Minister Meir, President Nixon, and Secretary of State Kissinger in 1973.

This is the moment when Bergman’s portrayal fulfills the “gravitas” role – and then some – because this is the moment where Meir is faced with a decision with the fate of a nation hanging in the balance.

On the eve of the October 1973 “Yom Kippur” war, Israeli intelligence could not conclusively determine that an attack was imminent, but the signs of a heavy troop build-up in the Golan Heights and in the Sinai were clear. Meir was convinced this was a set-up identical to the Six-Day War six years earlier. On one hand, there were advisors telling her an attack was not likely. The Israeli public shared that sentiment, especially given the crushing defeat which was  inflicted on the Arab states in 1967.  Despite the fact she had complete authority to order a full-scale mobilization for war, Meir did not do so.

But a few days later, it became clear an attack was imminent, and Meir’s delay only allowed the enemy forces to grow in strength. Mere hours before the outbreak of war, Meir met with Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan and Army Chief of Staff General David Elazar. While Dayan continued to argue that war was not likely and felt that only the Israeli Air Force and two Army division needed to be called up, while Elazar felt a full-scale mobilization was necessary along with launch of a devastating preemptive strike on the Syrian and Egyptian forces.

Meir agreed to the complete mobilization of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), but would not order the preemptive attack. Meir told Dayan and Elezar that Israel’s survival would depend on foreign aid. To that end, she believed they were not able to depend on European nations to supply Israel with military equipment, and the only country which would possibly come to Israel’s defense was the United States, but that wouldn’t happen if the Americans felt Israel initiated the hostilities. Meir placed her bet; million of lives including her own and the survival of a notion were at stake.

At 2 p.m. on October 6th, the armies of Syria and Egypt poured into Israel. The IDF launched a series of blocking actions against the Syrians and launched a mostly ineffective counter-offensive against the Egyptians in the Sinai.  By October 11th, the invading forces had been pushed back by the IDF, but the Israeli Air Force and Army had suffered massive casualties and had no reserves.  If the Arabs counter-attacked at this point, the Israelis could have easily suffered a defeat ensuring the destruction of the entire nation and a blood-bath of unimaginable scale.

But Meir’s gamble paid off. On October 12th, President of the United States Richard Nixon ordered the launch of Operation Nickel Grass, and within 24 hours American military hardware began flooding into Israel. Within days, the re-armed and re-supplied IDF was back on the offensive with forces across the Suez Canal threatening Cairo and breaking out of the Golan Heights on the road to Damascus.

One of the reasons why Meir made the right call on the preemptive strike is she hedged that bet by letting Nixon and Kissinger know her decision and why she made it. After Operation Nickel Grass was launched, Kissinger told Meir that she made the right choice; that if she had ordered the firing of the first shot, he and Nixon “wouldn’t have given Israel so much as a nail.”

Ironically, it was Meir’s triumph in the Yom Kippur war which led to her political downfall. In the aftermath, the Israeli public demanded answers for why the IDF seemed so -ill-prepared for the initial attack which led to it taking such heavy casualties. Both Meir and Chief of Staff Elazar became scapegoats and were forced to resign.

The Legacy of Golda Meir

Israeli 10 Sheqalim Banknote commemorating Golda Meir

The film ends by coming full circle with Ingrid Bergman bringing the tale of Golda Meir’s life story to a close with the audience of school children. Meir died shortly after this trip to her school; she had been suffering from lymphoma for years. Bergman passed away on her 67th birthday only a few months from the end of filming “A Woman Called Golda.”  Like Meir, Bergman was also suffering from cancer.

But despite the ignominious end to her political career, Golda Meir is still a revered figure in Israel.  Not only is she on a bank note, she is buried on Mount Herzl, the site of Israel’s national cemetery. The first and only woman to hold the office of Prime Minister in Israeli history to date, and only the fourth woman to be a head of state in the world at the time, Golda Meir was known as the “Iron Lady” of Israeli politics; this term would later be used to describe Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion called Meir “the best man in the government” and “strong-willed, straight-talking, gray-bunned grandmother of the Jewish people.”

Similar glowing words for Ingrid Bergman came from her daughter Isabella Rossellini after she had seen “A Woman Called Golda.”

She never showed herself like that in life. In life, Mum showed courage. She was always a little vulnerable, courageous, but vulnerable. Mother had a sort of presence, like Golda, I was surprised to see it…When I saw her performance, I saw a mother that I’d never seen before – this woman with balls.

Like I said, if you consider yourself a fan of Ingrid Bergman, and you’ve never seen this film, you need to change that. Even if you already agree with the words of her daughter, once you see “A Woman Called Golda,” you’ll have a whole new appreciation for them.

Look what it did for me…the guy who still thinks Rossellini is something that comes with a red sauce.

The Hidden Sports Analogy:

Give or take a few years, Golda Meir was born right around the same time as Joan Whitney Payson.  They both died within a few years of each other as well. But other than today’s hidden sports analogy, the similarities stop there.

Meir came to America as a penniless immigrant escaping the pogroms of Russia of the turn of the 20th century. Her father was a carpenter who sweated for every cent he ever had. Payson was the essential “trust find baby;” She inherited a trust fund from her grandfather William C. Whitney of the prominent Whitney family and on her father’s death in 1927, she received a large part of the family’s fortune…which goes all the way back to the colonial days.  She was “old money” of the first order, was pedigreed at Barnard College, and was known as a businesswoman, philanthropist, patron of the arts and renowned art collector.

Joan Whitney Payson

But Payson was also a dedicated sports enthusiast who also happened to be a minority shareholder in the old New York Giants baseball club. Albeit on a different scale, post World War II Palestine shares a crucial characteristic with Major League Baseball of the same time; for both this was a time of complete upheaval. The effect of establishing a Jewish state in land held by Muslims since the Crusades speaks for itself.  But the 1950s represented an equally tectonic shift in the demographics of the United States…and consequently those of it’s biggest sport at that time.

The Baseball Diaspora

The 1950s ushered in an era for franchise relocation and expansion for Major League Baseball. By 1957, the lure of new and untapped markets was so strong it reached the de facto capital of baseball, New York City. The “Big Apple” was home three teams; two of them being the biggest franchises in the game. To this day, no team has won more games than the Giants, and no team has won more championships than the New York Yankees. Conversely, the Brooklyn Dodgers were the “red-headed step-child” of New York baseball.  The Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley wanted to buy land on which to build a stadium to replace the dilapidated Ebbets Field. For a host of reasons, this proved difficult.

Meanwhile, emissaries from the city of Los Angeles were looking to entice a team to move to California.  After the war, the advent of transcontinental airline travel meant the obstacles of slow rail travel and the distance to the west coast were no longer in play.  Nobody really thought a team would leave New York; as such the Angelino’s target  to move west was the Washington Senators.  It was no secret that Senators’ owner Calvin Griffith was open to be courted for a move.  But when stories began to appear of O’Malley’s dissatisfaction with New York, the faction from Los Angeles shifted their focus.

In no time, O’Malley and the city of Los Angeles had a deal in place, but there was one snag. Citing travel and scheduling concerns, National League president Warren Giles would not allow O’Malley to move the Dodgers to the West Coast unless he could find another owner also willing to move. O’Malley began to put out feelers, but It was starting to look like Giles’ mandate was going to kill the deal. There were only eight teams in the National League at the time; the process of elimination left O’Malley with what he thought were no “real” options.

August Busch just had the city of St. Louis handed to his Cardinals as their exclusive market when the American League’s St. Louis Browns left to become the Baltimore Orioles in 1954, so there was no way he was moving. One of the biggest proponents of westward expansion was the Chicago Cubs’ owner William Wrigley; the Cubs were the first team to move their Spring Training facilities out of Florida, and he already owned the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. But for a host of reason, the idea of the Cubs abandoning Chicago was almost heretical as a team leaving New York.  The one team which might have moved west with him was the Boston Braves, but they already made their move when they headed to Milwaukee in 1953.

Just when O’Malley was about to give up on the Los Angeles deal and the Brooklyn fans were beginning to rest assured they weren’t going to lose “dem Bums,” the bombshell hit that both the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants were leaving the “Big Apple” for Los Angeles and San Francisco respectively.

Horace Stoneham and Walter O’Malley right before they head for the airport.

What nobody knew that O’Malley discovered was the Giants’ majority owner Horace Stoneham was having similar difficulty finding a replacement for his team’s antiquated home stadium, the Polo Grounds. While all this was going one, the city of Minneapolis was already constructing Metropolitan Stadium in an attempt to lure a baseball team and/or a football team to the upper mid-west. The Minneapolis Millers were the New York Giants top minor-league affiliate at the time and Shoreham was noted to have said “there were not two better major league stadiums.”

That’s when O’Malley put “two and two together” deducing Shoreham was at least entertaining the idea of moving the Giants to the Twin Cities.  Being open to leaving New York was the only opening O’Malley needed; he persuaded Shoreham to move the Giants San Francisco, fulfilling Warren Giles’ dictate the Dodgers would have a National League rival closer than St. Louis.

Redrawing Baseball’s Borders

As a minority owner of the the New York Giants, Joan Whitney Payson was staunchly opposed to the move. She knew what this would do to the fans. Baseball fandom in New York in the 1950 enjoyed the same fervor as any religion.  It was a major component of your personal identity; race, creed, national origin, and Dodgers, Giants, or Yankees. It was that simple and well-defined, and you couldn’t change any of them.

In one fell swoop, legions of New York National League fans were cast into the baseball desert. Their teams were gone, and there was nothing they could do about.  While Dodger and Giants fans enjoy of the great rivalries in all of sports, they do have one unifying factor. They both have an eyeball-splitting hatred of the New York Yankees.

Imagine what would have happened if in 1973 Golda Meir had said something like “In order to escape the never-ending cycle of war, we’re going to move the State of Israel to Utah. It’s just like Palestine; it’s got a big, salty lake and plenty of desert. It’ll be great!” Granted, that comparison leans a smidge to the absurd side, but it makes the point. It also sets the table for something even more absurd which actually happened.  Imagine that after Israel made the move to Utah, somebody told the Jews left in Palestine that they could always just convert to Islam.

That’s essentially what National League president Warren Giles told Dodger and Giant fans after their teams were ripped out from underneath them.  Giles was a huge proponent of expansion or relocation; anything that would put his league into new markets. During his term as president from 1952 to 1969, the National League broke out of it’s borders not having any teams farther south or west of St. Louis. In much the same way the borders of Israel were redrawn by military conquest, the borders of baseball territory were being redrawn by Warren Giles and his quest to chase the ever-shifting American population demographics.

The first step was the two New York teams heading for California. But it was in the 1960s when the expansion of baseball really took off. At the dawn of the decade, Giles announced plans to add four teams to the National League, with two being added in 1962 and two more in 1969. The plan called for the 1962 expansion to target Texas and the South, while the 1969 additions would focus on the West and possibly even a foray into Canada.

When questioned as to why there was no thought towards establishing a new National League presence in the “Big Apple,” Giles’ notorious reply “Who says you have to have a team in New York?”

The Rise of a New Baseball State

Naturally, Giles’ comments didn’t sit well with New Yorkers.  But what baseball fans didn’t know was Giles’ visions of expansion were the direct result of the founding of a third Major League. While the Continental League never played a game, the fact that it had investors ready to move big-time baseball into cities where it did not exist yet made both the National and American leagues take notice.

Founded in 1958 by prominent attorney William Shea, the Continental Baseball League (CBL) had prominent prospective franchise owners like Bob Howsam (who would help create the American Football League and become the founder of the Denver Broncos), Wheelock Whitney, Jr. (who was influential in bringing professional sports to Minneapolis and was an owner of the National Football League’s Minnesota Vikings) and Toronto’s Jack Kent Cooke (who at one time owned the NFL’s Washington Redskins, the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers, and the Los Angeles Lakers of the NHL.). That was a formidable line-up, but the CBL acquired its gravitas when Joan Whitney Payson threw open the door of her Fort Knox-ian bank vault to fund the start-up league.

Once she knew she couldn’t stop the Giants from leaving New York, Payson immediately sold her interest and began efforts to get another team in the “Big Apple.” But once she heard Warren Giles’ comments about New York, she knew the National League president did not want to give her an expansion team.  But once she heard of the Continental Baseball League, Payson knew one way or another she was going to bring baseball back to Brooklyn and Queens.

When Warren Giles found out that Payson had just been awarded the CBL’s New York franchise, he knew he could not have somebody with her wealth and dedication to New York as a rival in the nation’s largest market. As a result, Warren Giles and the National League awarded an expansion franchise in 1960 for New York City to Joan Whitney Payson.  At this point, both her and Shea abandoned the CBL to focus on their new National League franchise. This effectively marked the end of the CBL, which formally disbanded later that year.

Many have speculated over the years that the CBL was simply a canard used by Shea and Payson to illicit an expansion franchise out of Warren Giles. True or not, the fact is they brought the National League back to New York. The rest is history.

The Legacy

The New York Mets took the field for the first time in 1962. They had a record of 40 wins and 120 losses, making them easily the worst team in all of Major League Baseball.  The wins and losses didn’t matter; what was important was baseball was back for Brooklyn and Queens. In those boroughs, there was no baseball; the hated Yankees were for Manhattan and the Bronx.  Building on that,Payson managed to merge the fan bases of the departed Dodgers and Giants in much the same manner Golda Meir unified three political parties in Israel. The Mets’ uniforms featured both Dodger blue and Giant orange, and for their first two seasons they played their home games in the Giants’ old home, the Polo Grounds.

William Shea and the stadium that would bear his name.

In 1964, the Mets moved into the newly-constructed William H. Shea Municipal Stadium, or “Shea” for short. Payson insisted the new venue bear Shea’s name in tribute for all he did to bring the Mets to New York.  As for Payson, she retained majority ownership of the Mets and functioned as the team president from it’s inception until her death in 1975.  But she was no “figurehead” in the corner office. Payson was “hands-on” for the day-to-day operations of the New York Mets every day of her life. She was a fixture in the team’s facilities and was well admired by the team’s personnel and players, and all around baseball as well.

Joan Whitney Payson was the first woman in a major North American sports league found a franchise from the ground up, to buy majority control of a team rather than inheriting it, and as such was the first to have her team capture championship when “Miracle” Mets won the World Series in 1969.

Joan Whitney Payson was there from Day One of the New York Mets, and she gambled hard with her own money to bring the dream of a new franchise in New York to reality.  Golda Meir was there from Day One with Israel, and she literally bet her own life to save her dream of an independent Jewish state. As mentioned, Payson and Meir came from very different backgrounds; Payson had money, and Golda Meir ended up on money.

But they both created something which means a great deal to a great many people to this day.

The Moral of the Story:

Even the largest of historical figures can’t make history alone. but Joan Whitney Payson and Golda Meir got pretty damn close.

FUN FACT: There was a television mini-series made in America in 1983 about the life of Anwar Sadat. He was played by Louis Gossett, Jr. and it was banned Egypt.

BONUS FUN FACT: This is not the first time Ingrid Bergman’s portrayal of Golda Meir has been mentioned on Dubsism. She was actually one of our first Sports Doppelgangers.

Check out Dubsism’s Movies and Blog-A-Thons page for a full schedule of projects past, present, and future!

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Sports Analogies Hidden In Classic Movies – Volume 90: “A Woman Called Golda” Today's Movie: A Woman Called Golda Year of Release: 1982 Stars: Ingrid Bergman, Ned Beatty, Franklin Cover…

[rickhorrow]

10 To Watch : Mayor’s Edition 11419

RICK HORROW’S TOP 10 SPORTS/BIZ/TECH/PHILANTHROPY ISSUES FOR THE WEEK OF NOVEMBER 4 : MAYOR’S EDITION

with Jacob Aere

Fully 14.8% of all World Series ads focused on giving back and corporate social responsibility. There were more advocacy and corporate social responsibility ads aired during the first four games of the World Series than any other type of ad outside of auto makers, according to data from Advertising Analytics, a strategy firm that specializes in political and issues advertising. The World Series attracted mostly defense, enterprise technology, and healthcare ads. While this was a departure from typical sports championships, in which consumer package goods and retail ads typically dominate, Axios noted World Series games in DC presented a juicy opportunity for brands to “reach Washington decision-makers in a casual environment. While many marquee advertisers sponsor events around Washington DC, there are few games that will have as high of an impact and as engaged of an audience as a World Series that includes a Washington team.” As the hyper-political environment in Washington becomes more contentious, companies are pressured to take a stand on more issues than they have in the past – and this is reflected in their marketing initiatives. Expect this trend to continue at least through the 2020 election cycle.

A college players' rights group has entered into a partnership with the NFL Players Association to explore how to maximize name, image, and likeness rights. A day before the NCAA announcement last week, the NFLPA and National College Players Association (NCPA) announced jointly that the partnership will "explore opportunities for" college athletes in merchandise, gaming, licensed products, and "how recent developments impact television broadcast revenues in pursuit of fairness." California's Fair Pay to Play Act granting college athletes in that state the ability to profit off their name, image, and likeness goes into effect in 2023. A similar bill has been proposed in Florida, but it would go into effect far sooner—July 1, 2020. A Pennsylvania bill is expected to be introduced soon. Were college players able to unionize in a similar fashion to the way NFL players are able to collectively bargain, it would put even more pressure on the NCAA to craft new rules that give student athletes the same rights that all their classmates on campus currently enjoy.

Premier League Primary Stars USA visits Austin elementary school for soccer-themed learning. On October 25, Austin, Texas elementary school students worked side-by-side with Premier League stars during a soccer-themed educational experience. Premier League, the top level of the English soccer league system and EVERFI, a leader in driving social change through technology and education, recently joined forces to bring an interactive soccer-themed education program to students at Perez Elementary School in Austin. The event was part of the Premier League Primary Stars USA program, an educational initiative focused on health and wellness and social and emotional learning skills. Representatives from the Premier League and associated pro soccer clubs led a digital learning session, a hands-on soccer skills clinic, and a school-wide assembly centered on areas of critical emotional development. Perez students also engaged with visiting soccer stars, met mascots from four Premier League clubs, and saw the iconic Premier League trophy. On hand for the event were Premier League star winger and ambassador Shaun Wright-Phillips, EVERFI Global CMO Brian Cooley, Congressman Lloyd Doggett, and youth coaches from clubs including Aston Villa, Liverpool, Manchester City, and Wolverhampton.

Kansas City, here we come. Our “Power of Sports” program heads to Kansas City this month, highlighting community outreach programs, culturally significant sites, and people who have made a difference through sports. This month, host Rick Horrow visits the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum to speak with President Bob Kendrick about the 100th anniversary of the formation of the Negro Leagues coming up next year and the museum’s role in the celebration and in the community. He also checks in on two of the Kansas City Royals’ youth outreach programs: Royalty Fields grants and a recurring Special Olympics clinic, and hears from James McGinnis, a high school football player from the KC Metro, who suffered a traumatic brain injury and used the Chiefs’ success last season to motivate his recovery. Our Game Changer segment features an interview with former NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue filmed in early October at a Sport Business Handbook contributor symposium hosted by EVERFI at their Washington, DC headquarters

The Orlando Magic have "filed an updated master plan" for their downtown Orlando Sports + Entertainment District that is "expected to more than double" the original $200 million project budget. According to the Orlando Sentinel, the mixed-use district will be built "starting next year on 8.4 acres across from Amway Center." Magic Chief Communications Officer Joel Glass said the project will now cost "well over" $500 million. The district will "contain nearly 110,000 square feet of retail space, a conference center hotel with 80,000 square feet of event space, offices, apartments and a 2,500-space parking garage." The updated plan maintains the original concept from 2018 but "increases the number of hotel rooms by 50 and more than doubles the amount of office space from the original 200,000 square feet to 420,000 square feet." District Director Pat Gallagher said that the office tower "would now rise to 18 stories, which includes the ground-floor retail, multilevel parking structure and commercial office space." The Sentinel notes the Magic's new headquarters "would occupy 40,000 square feet in the office tower,” or close to 10%.

Unsung World Series winner this year:  Palm Beach County, FL.  The most publicized “first” this year involves the visiting team winning every World Series game.  However, maybe one of the most important economic “firsts” is the first time the World Series finalists shared a Spring Training facility:  the FITTEAM Ballpark of the Palm Beaches.  The 7,700-seat stadium also features six practice fields each for the Washington Nationals and the Houston Astros.  The 160-acre site also includes a 1.8 mile public walk trail and other facilities.  The Palm Beach County Sports Commission touts the facility as a major economic generator for the county, as it also hosts over 1,400 youth and tournament baseball games each year.  Look for a series of major announcements by the county and sports commission over the next two months.

San Diego State is now offering the city of San Diego $87.7 million for Mission Valley stadium site. San Diego State University is "now offering to pay" the city $19.5 million more than before to purchase the Mission Valley stadium property formerly occupied by the Chargers. According to the letter delivered last Monday to San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, SDSU's new offer is $87.7 million, which consists of a "revised purchase price" of $86.2 million for 135 acres of land, plus an estimated $1.5 million to "account for a portion of the site's appreciation" since 2017. In addition, SDSU is "proposing to take over the portion" of Murphy Canyon Creek immediately adjacent to the site "without requiring the city to pay for any past-due maintenance,” according to the San Diego Union-Tribune. The news comes as SDSU cracked the Associated Press college football Top 25 for the first time in many years (they are now #24), an achievement that should aid local enthusiasm for the SDSU West project, as a new football/soccer stadium is part of the master plan.

Parisian soccer club PSG goes green with Gaussin transport deal. According to SportsPro, French soccer giant Paris Saint-Germain has signed a strategic partnership with the Gaussin Group for the supply of self-driving, 100% electric vehicles for public transport and goods transport. The long-term agreement includes equipment for all of the Ligue 1 champions’ infrastructure, including their new training complex which will open its doors in 2022. The deal also falls in line with PSG’s ambition to utilize innovations in sustainable development and autonomous mobility, especially with regard to the practice facility as it bids to become the first recognized Smart City in sports. The Gaussin Group will initially undertake research to understand where to best deploy its autonomous and electric mobility solutions before rolling out its products where it best suits the needs of the club. This deal marks a movement for sports franchises to be more environmentally conscious of their off-field impacts.

Philadelphia 76ers’ Tobias Harris donates $1 million to charities. According to 247 Sports, Harris announced a combined donation of $1 million to assist nine different charities in Philadelphia. He announced the charities and the dollar amount for each during a community draft at a local elementary school. The benefitting organizations include the Center for Black Educator Development which received $300,000; Read by 4th was given $200,000; The Fund for the School District of Philadelphia, the Foundation for Orange County Public Schools, and Legends Academy were all given $100,000; World Literacy Foundation and True Love Missions each received $75,000; and both WUFSD Wynadanch Memorial High School and Team Up Philly were given $25,000. Although Harris was traded just eight months ago from the Los Angeles Clippers, the basketball star seems to be investing heavily in the youth of Philadelphia, a city facing a major teacher shortage and in which two-thirds of third graders can’t read at grade level.

Call of Duty League launches in January, 2020.  According to BusinessWire, Activision Blizzard Esports announced the inaugural season of the Call of Duty League will begin with the Call of Duty League Launch Weekend at the Minneapolis Armory January 24-26, 2020. The event will be hosted by Minnesota Røkkr, which is the Call of Duty League team operated by WISE Ventures Esports, under the ownership of the Minnesota Viking owner Wilf family and tech investor Gary Vaynerchuk. The league will feature all 12 of the professional Call of Duty League teams competing across three days, and the opening weekend will feature additional fan and player experiences to celebrate the launch of Activision Blizzard Esports’ highly anticipated new city-based league. In a concept that should appeal to traditional sports fans, the Call of Duty League follows a home-vs-away format with 5-versus-5 professional match play. Throughout the season, each team will host “Home Series” weekends in their market, with multiple pro teams competing at each which will draw in crowds to take part in the events and participate in one of the most far-reaching video game series ever created.

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